


Swimming Fool

by baridalive



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Discovery, Kissing, M/M, Mermaid!Hyuck, Mermaids, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Near Death Experiences, Research, Scientist!mark, hyuck is just there to pick up the pieces, jeno and mark are brothers!, jisung is the only one with brain cells, lots of kissing at the end, mark makes bad decisions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 11:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18659710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baridalive/pseuds/baridalive
Summary: Mark Lee: world famous marine biologist with a secret side-agenda of mermaid-searching that leads him astray more often than not... but his endeavors are bound to pay off eventually (and it might be sooner than he thinks).





	Swimming Fool

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thebestthingsincefriedchicken (Sapphire__Sky)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphire__Sky/gifts).



> uhhh well one of my favorite fanartists (kyoon!!) posted [THIS GORGEOUS THING](https://twitter.com/boyishlyy/status/1119243747718356993) and,,,, yeah i fell in love with it  
> i was just finishing this story up (read: rewriting it for the fourth time) when nct's miami beach pics came out and i cried but wow did those pull me through the rest of this  
> (yes the title of this is a seventeen song, but i listened to Beyond The Sea by Bobby Darin the whole time i was writing this so idk why that isn't the title)  
> a huge thank you to all of my betas for this (val & lee & raine & becca & eris & clara!!!) but the biggest thank you of all to miss jen because she was the one who gave me this whole idea to start with and helped me through the whole process!! i owe you so much!!!

Mark wasn’t crazy. He was _right_.

He knew that mermaids existed; he’d even met one as a child on a visit to Jeju. A boy with silver hair and a glistening tail had popped out of the water to play with him for the afternoon. Granted, Mark hadn’t seen one since, but he was willing to bet his entire life on the fact that his youthful eyes hadn’t deceived him 𑁋 no matter how much his parents told him that there had been no merboy on the beach that day in Jeju.

That one encounter had been enough of a push for Mark to become a marine biologist, dedicating his entire life to finding proof of mermaids’ existence, albeit secretly. Under the guise of studying species of sharks that reside in the Yellow and East China Seas, he continued his search for any sign of mermaids anywhere in the vicinity of where he last saw one.

Because he became so dedicated to finding them, he almost accidentally became a world renowned marine biologist because of the studies on all of the shark species that he had done on his countless trips to the seas closest to Jeju. He did actually do a lot of work to get him as far as he had come, but his mermaid-existence-proving hobby had gotten him there in the first place.

It was what had brought Mark to a boat in the Yellow Sea as storm clouds rolled ominously overhead exactly twenty years after his five-year-old self had spent that day on the beach frolicking with the merboy. This time around he found himself dressed in skintight diving gear with his research partner, Jisung, strapping the oxygen tank onto his back.

“Are you sure you still want to do this today, Mark?” Jisung’s voice was unsure, something that Mark didn’t like. His uneasiness could easily worm its way into Mark’s own head. “Those clouds don’t look good.”

“No, I’m going to go under.” Mark shook his head, “It’s _chimaera phantasma_ breeding season and that’s not something I’ll get to see for another year if I don’t dive today.”

“Screw the ghost sharks, Mark.” Jisung crossed his arms. “This is about your safety. No one is going with you today.”

“How is your ankle holding up, by the way?” Mark made a move to bend down and take a look at the bandages but Jisung flicked his forehead, bringing his attention back up.

“It’s healing fine, but that’s besides the point,” Jisung huffed, running his fingers through his hair. “I still don’t want you to go.”

“This might be a once in a lifetime opportunity, Sungie!” Mark protested, and he knew that Jisung was fully aware that there was no way he could actually talk him out of diving that day, that he was just delaying the inevitable.

“Jeno is going to kill me if anything happens to you,” Jisung bemoaned, but busied himself with double-checking Mark’s suit and tank to make sure that everything was in shape.

“My brother will be _fine_ ,” Mark assured. “Besides, he’s crazy about you. He couldn’t hurt you even if he tried.” Mark added on a wink at the end, making his younger partner blush a flaming red to the tips of his ears.

“I’m going to shove you off of this damn boat, Mark Lee,” Jisung threatened, flicking his shoulder. Mark just grinned.

“I thought you didn’t want me to go.” The teasing gained him a well-earned whack to the back of his head, but it came from his older research partner, Taeil.

“Stop being stupid and get out there so you can come back sooner.” Taeil eyed the sky, squinting at the grey clouds in the distance. “I don’t want you to be in there when those get overhead.”

“Time estimation?” Mark asked, pushing his dyed blond hair, the product of a lost bet with Jisung, back off of his forehead. The younger was still mad that Mark pulled it off despite having never had any hair color other than his natural dark hair before. He tucked the locks back into the hood of his suit as he and Taeil tugged it over his head.

“Forty minutes, tops.” Jisung bit his lip after he spoke, standing in front of Mark to adjust his goggles over his eyes. “But I expect you to be back before that time is up. You know how unpredictable this weather can be.”

Mark nodded, scrunching his face under the goggles to make sure he could still comfortably blink and breathe.

“I’ll be back up in thirty. The two tanks will be more than enough at that depth for me to do everything I need to do.”

“Be safe,” Taeil said, patting Mark on the shoulder before walking back off to the helm to have a word with the captain about Mark’s plans for the dive.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Mark.” Jisung fidgeted with his fingers. “I’d like to get you back in one piece.”

“I’ve done solo dives before, Sungie, it’s okay,” Mark did his best to wink through the goggles, but gave up in favor of just grinning widely. “I’ve got this and I’m going to be alright. There’s no need to worry about me.”

“That sounds like something that you’d say when you’re about to do something that warrants my worrying,” Jisung frowned, but Mark just laughed as the younger tightened the tether around his waist, connecting his body to the boat.

“Nothing is going to happen. This is just a normal dive to look at the chimaera sharks.”

“No sidetracks for your mermaid quest, though, okay?”

Mark almost choked.

“You’ve been talking to Jeno about this, haven’t you?” Mark accused, and Jisung just shrugged.

“It came up in conversation. Jeno is the only other person who thinks he saw the mermaid—”

“Merboy.”

“Right, okay, saw the mer _boy_ ,” Jisung emphasized, mocking Mark, who just did his best to scrunch his nose at him under the goggles. “I want you to stay focused today, alright? Today is not the day for your fantastical distractions, Mark. Not with those clouds on the horizon.”

Mark wanted to argue that Jeno had met the merboy and talked to him—even built a sandcastle with the silver-haired boy, but refused to admit to anyone else what he saw that afternoon, leaving Mark on his own to try and find him again. Today, though, was not the day to do that, and he didn’t have an abundance of time to waste, so he nodded. The motion made Jisung relax a bit, so Mark counted it as a win.

“Count me down, Sungie,” Mark instructed, holding the oxygen mask out for Jisung to put on.

“Five, four, three, two,” Jisung counted down slowly as he carefully attached the mask, strapping it around the back of Mark’s head and turning on the valve on the tank. “One. You have sixty minutes of oxygen, but I don’t want you getting anywhere _near_ that point. Be back in forty or I will whoop your ass to next Tuesday.” Jisung starts the hour-long timer on Mark’s watch.

Mark choked down a response of ‘tomorrow is Tuesday,’ instead opting for a fist bump. He climbed up onto the ledge of the ship, glancing back long enough for Taeil to give him a curt nod before he crouched up on the ledge and rolled off backwards into the freezing cold sea.

The wetsuits were supposed to be insulated, but there was only so much they could do for warmth when it came to one source of heat versus an entire body of water that was fifty-some degrees fahrenheit colder than he was. Mark switched on the light located on the center of his goggles, aiding his descent to the sea floor to try and find the sharks that he was supposed to be studying on this trip.

It didn’t take nearly as long as expected to find the little colony of sharks on the sandy floor of the Yellow Sea, all milling around peacefully. All it took was for Mark to get within a few feet of them for the adult sharks to scatter, leaving him to examine the eggs that the mothers had left.

Disturbing as little as possible, Mark looked around the piles of eggs, examining them and taking mental notes on their appearance. To be perfectly frank, Mark had grown to be just as fascinated with the sharks that were the focus of his studies and speeches as he was with the idea of mermaids existing. Over his years of schooling and research, he grew an unforseen love with the sharks of the Yellow and East China seas.

If Mark could smile under the mask at the sight of the young wriggling around in the clear egg shell, he would have. The populations were slowly but steadily rising as more efforts to increase biodiversity and improve the environment around the Asian seas were being put into effect.

Mark felt his heart swell when one of the braver mother sharks came back to nudge at some of, what Mark was assuming to be, her eggs, adjusting their arrangement in the seemingly haphazard pile.

A quick glance at his glowing watch told Mark that he’d only been under for twenty minutes and that he had another ten to explore down there before Jisung would start worrying. Turning his head back and forth, he scanned the sea floor; the light on his head was strong enough to power its way through the sand that Mark and the scurrying sharks had kicked up at the bottom.

In the distance, a couple hundred yards away, Mark guessed, there was a flash of a pearlescent shine reflected from his headlight and Mark nearly somersaulted backwards in the water. He might have been going crazy, his head already swimming with thoughts about mermaids from his conversation with Jisung earlier, but he swore that looked like a mermaid tail.

There was only a second of internal debate before Mark carefully extracted himself from the shark eggs and kicked off after the flash of light. It didn’t even end up being that hard to follow, but Mark never found himself within more than fifty feet of the tail, no matter how fast he swam.

He couldn’t swim for that long anyway before the tether that kept him in contact with the boat tugged him back to an abrupt stop, air rushing from his lungs. He twisted in the water, looking up to see that the tether was pulled almost completely taut, the ship resting on the surface meters upon meters above him.

A glance behind him told Mark that he had about ten seconds to make up his mind on how to proceed before he lost sight of the creature, and he successfully made the stupidest decision of his life in approximately three.

With well-practiced fingers, Mark deftly unhooked himself from the tether, already bracing himself for the lecture that Taeil was surely going to give him later, not to mention the screeching Jisung would surely dole out when he returned.

Mark hated how his obsession with mermaids had brought him to the point of untethering himself from the boat while his oxygen was about half-empty and a storm was brewing on the surface overhead, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about the repercussions that his actions might bring upon himself. No, all that was on his mind was that he was getting closer and closer to the glittering silver tail that kept darting around just out of his reach.

The tail took a sharp turn around the side of a rock, disappearing from Mark’s line of sight for a split second, but that split second was long enough for Mark to lose track of where it went completely. By the time he had made it around the same rock, the tail was nowhere in sight.

If Mark could have screamed at that moment, he would have. He just _knew_ he had been so close to finding a mermaid he could taste it on the tip of his tongue, but it had slipped away from him before he could do anything about it.

Just as quickly as his opportunity had disappeared, it returned and with renewed vigor. The only warning Mark got was a glimmer of silver from the corner of his vision before he was knocked back in the water, sent tumbling in the current back against the rock as the creature from earlier darted past him at breakneck speed. It all happened so fast Mark couldn’t even process what had been attached to the other side of the tail before it was gone.

Righting himself, Mark pushed his back off of the rock and knew something was wrong. He flexed his shoulders, turning his head so he could see his oxygen tanks and immediately spotted the problem.

The pressure gauge was dropping by the second, in time with the stream of bubbles that was coming out of a split on the side of the one of the tanks where it had taken the brunt of the impact between Mark and the rock.

Mark knew that his time limit to be underwater was dwindling quickly, but he wanted to get another glimpse of the tail. Just one.

He didn’t have to wait for long, though, because the tail flicked past him again, darting through the small beam that the little light on his goggles cast out into the water. Mark held his ground as best he could with his body angled forward, but still found himself being forced backwards from the sheer force of the water in the wake of the tail.

It wasn’t all for naught, however, because for the first time since he was a five-year-old boy, Mark laid his eyes upon a mermaid.

Or a merboy, Mark wasn’t sure yet.

There had been a distinctly human torso connected to the tail but the mermaid had passed him too quickly to distinguish any other features. He wanted to stay down at the seafloor for the next year, trying to make closer contact with it, but his need for oxygen overruled that.

Mark cursed every deity that he could think of for getting him so close, but taking his opportunity to discover more about his life journey when he he could almost literally brush it with his suited fingertips. He clenched his hands into fists before he kicked off of the rock, forcing him to not look back as he propelled himself back up to the surface.

Vigorously blinking back the tears that stung at the back of his eyes, Mark focused all of his energy on getting back up to the surface before he drowned from the seawater pouring into his oxygen tank. There was an interesting mix of relief and sadness that Mark felt wash through his body as he broke through the surface, tearing the mask off of his face as just water started to leak through the tubes and into his mouth.

Mark pulled the goggles off of his eyes, looking at the sky to see that the storm was looming over the sea, menacing in an almost taunting manner because when Mark looked around and saw no sign of the research ship and realized he was out of oxygen, he realized just how screwed he was.

There was a flash of lightning over the sea and Mark knew that he had to find land before he ended up getting electrocuted in the storm, if not for any other reason, but he was literally in the middle of the sea and couldn’t see land in any direction he looked. His internal compass was usually pretty reliable, but he had lost all sense of direction while he had been underwater.

Another helpless glance around earned him a clap of thunder, almost in warning. Mark gulped, pulling the goggles back over his eyes and taking a wild guess that the closest piece of land was somewhere off to his right. He swam and swam, letting his thoughts stray to how Jisung was feeling right now, if he’d contacted Jeno the moment Mark untethered the rope from himself or if he was waiting in hope that Mark would resurface by the ship still.

Guilt crawled into his stomach, beginning to gnaw at his insides and Mark knew that if he survived this, he would owe his partner dinner for the next year for all of the worry he was putting him through right now. 

With every stroke Mark took, the weather seemed to worsen. The thunder got louder, the wind picked up, and Mark could feel the sting of the rain even through the material of his suit. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the waves on the surface of the sea would get big enough to crest and crash over him.

Fortunately, Mark was right in his prediction.

Unfortunately, that meant he was suddenly facing a wave nearly four times his height and had no way to escape. He simply held his breath as the wall of water descended upon him, and for a second, he swore that he could see the face of the young merboy that he had played with on Jeju so many years ago.

 

* * *

 

Waking up was unpleasant, to say the least.

Consciousness came to Mark in the form of rolling over onto his side and coughing up half of the Yellow Sea that had been stuck in his lungs. After freeing his body of a gallon of water, he flopped backwards, letting his head hit the soft sand and allowing himself to relax into the bright sunshine that warmed his face. At least until he realized that he had no idea where he was.

Mark shot straight up, blinking his eyes wide open and rubbing the excess sand out of his hair. Somewhere along the way, he had lost his oxygen tank, goggles and one of his flippers. The water lapped at his feet, cooling off his toes. He pushed off the other flipper with some difficulty, casting it aside since his gear wasn’t as much of a pressing concern as other matters at the moment.

He was sitting on a beach, its white sand stretching along the coast for as far as the eye could see. Clear blue water lapped up at the sand, calmly making its way from the coastline to the horizon.

“Where am I?” Mark massaged his temples, asking himself in hopes that he would somehow come up with an answer. As it turned out, he didn’t have to answer because someone else did.

“Jeju island,” a voice replied from somewhere off to his left. Mark whipped around to see a boy, a man, sitting behind a rock with his head resting on his arms, chin tilted to the side in curiosity and lips pulled into a lopsided grin. Mark couldn’t make out most of his features because the sun was shining directly behind him. “I thought you’d never wake up.”

“Why am I here?” It was a stupid question, Mark knew that, but it was still something that he wanted the man to answer. He shifted so he was kneeling, a hand over his squinted eyes to try and get a better look at the mysterious person.

“You washed up ashore during the storm last night, or, well…” the man hesitated, his sinking down slightly, shoulders hunching. “I brought you in, actually.”

“But how did you…” Mark trailed off, confused at how someone could have swam all the way out to where he was in the middle of the Yellow Sea, and then managed to drag him back to shore all in the middle of a storm. 

“I’ll give you a hint,” the man said, dipping his head out of view for a moment. “We met a long time ago.”

He slipped out from behind the rock, and Mark nearly face planted into the sand when he saw the man’s face. It had lost its baby fat and replaced it with all sharp lines and angles of tan skin, accented by freckles across the bridge of his nose and little moles dotting his skin all over. Silver hair glinted in the sun, matching the glittering scales that covered his tail where the man’s legs should be.

Mark squeaked, covering his mouth in astonishment.

It was the merboy from all those years ago.

Donghyuck.

He had grown up a lot, but Mark supposed it made sense because he hadn’t seen the boy in twenty years. It made Mark wonder if Donghyuck recognized him, or if he had changed too much since he was a boy, or if he just didn’t remember the encounter that had changed the course of Mark’s life in an afternoon.

“I remember you…” Mark’s voice cracked embarrassingly, making Donghyuck laugh as he pulled himself up to sit on the rock that he had been hiding behind.

“I remember you too, Mark.” The smile that the merboy wore was enough for Mark to slump into a little pile of happiness on the sand.

“I’ve been looking for you for so long!” Mark ran his hands through his hair, mind still not quite grasping the situation. “This is unbelievable! You’re real!”

“Of course I’m real,” Donghyuck scoffed. “I just saved you. If I wasn’t real, you’d be dead.”

“How do I know I’m not dead?” Another stupid question, but Mark counted it as covering his bases. A finful of water tossed at his face that left him spluttering and wiping his eyes was proof enough that he was still alive. “Okay, well, thanks? Why did you save me, though?”

“I saved you because you have a kind heart, Mark,” the merboy spoke softly but his words held weight. “I’ve seen you come around here for years, and I’ve only ever seen you treat the plants and animals with the utmost respect and adoration. That’s a trait that is hard to find in humans nowadays, I’ve found.”

“Well, yeah, I love all of the sea creatures,” Mark felt a blush rise up his neck under Donghyuck’s blatant scrutiny. “They’re so fascinating and I don’t understand why people would ever want to hurt them. I’ve actually been studying the ghost sharks that live in the Yellow and East China Seas, but now that I’m thinking about it I’m not sure that you’d know what those are…” Mark stopped talking once he realized he was rambling and Donghyuck is just looking at him with a combination of amusement and affection.

“You talk a lot…” Donghyuck shifted on the rock; the scales on his tail shimmer between silver and pearlescent pink when the sunlight hit them just right. “It’s quite interesting.”

“Your tail is beautiful…” Mark hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of Donghyuck the entire time, but the scales that winked in the sun’s rays caught his attention and refused to let him go.

“Thank you,” Donghyuck grinned, twisting it from side to side. “I love it a lot.”

“Can I…” Mark swallowed, unsure of how to go about asking a merboy if he was allowed to touch his tail, but Donghyuck thankfully caught his drift.

“Sure,” his voice was soft as he flicked his tail forward so it was resting on the front side of the rock closest to Mark. In typical awkward-Mark fashion, he scuttled across the sand to the base of the rock on his knees in the least graceful way possible, but he didn’t care.

With a second glance up to Donghyuck, just to double-check that it was really alright if he did this, Mark lightly positioned the pads of his fingers on the tip of the caudal fin at the end of his tail—or what he assumed to be the equivalent of a caudal fin. As he advanced father up the tail, he brushed over the smooth scales that lined the tail, they were surprisingly warm to the touch, and continued upward until the scaled slowly faded out into soft, tan skin at Donghyuck’s waist.

His hands slowly traveled upwards until he felt something odd on Donghyuck’s sides. Mark frowned, craning his neck around to see thin, painful-looking slits lining his sides just beneath his ribcage.

“Hey! Don’t touch there!” Donghyuck slapped Mark’s hands away from the slits.

“Why?” Mark drew his hands back from Donghyuck so quickly he almost fell over backwards. “Are you hurt?”

“No, dumbass,” Donghyuck exhaled, annoyed. “That’s where I _breathe_.”

Mark’s eyes widened perceptibly and looked back the slits, which he knew were gills, and everything clicked into place. He had to curl his hands into fists and stick them under his knees to keep from reaching out to touch Donghyuck without permission.

Donghyuck heaved a sigh, but unlatched his arms from his sides where he had been protecting his gills.

“You can touch them as long as you promise not to suffocate me.”

Mark couldn’t see himself, but he knew that his eyes lit up with excitement at the prospect of being able to take a closer look. He was an absolute sucker for learning new things, and there were just so many endless opportunities with Donghyuck that he continues to find it difficult to hold himself back.

As gently as possible, he traced the slits that fluttered with every rise and fall of Donghyuck’s chest, that quivered ever-so-slightly when Mark’s fingertips danced across them.

“Fascinating,” Mark whispered, more to himself than anything. When he pulled back, he looked up and Donghyuck was biting his lip in a way that made him look like he was trying not to say something. “What’s on your mind?”

“Can I touch your legs?” Donghyuck blurted out, covering his mouth with his hand right after, as if he didn’t actually mean to let that slip. Mark was a fraction of a second from saying yes, but there was a small catch that he realized just before he agreed.

“I can’t take off my suit…” Mark scowled, pulling at the material that clung to his thigh like a second skin.

He had told Donghyuck a half-truth.

He _could_ take off the suit, but it was the problem of the lack of clothing underneath his wetsuit that posed the problem. Given that, other than the wetsuit, he was just wearing a Speedo, he wasn’t about to go and take off ninety-seven percent of his clothing. As much as he wanted to oblige to Donghyuck’s request, he was forced to shake his head and come up with a compromise.

“You can touch the outside of the suit, though,” Mark offered, and was ecstatic at how excited Donghyuck looked to even do that.

“Yes please!” Donghyuck clapped his hands together and slid off of the side of the rock into the shallow water that Mark was kneeling in. Mark flashed him a grin and straightened out his legs, wiggling his toes in the cool water. He watched in slight jealousy as Donghyuck gilded around him with grace that Mark wished that he possessed.

Donghyuck started at Mark’s ankles, tracing the contours of his muscles all the way from his lower calves and thighs until his fingers were skirting up and over Mark’s hipbones and waist. He dragged his fingers with rapt curiosity up Mark’s chest to his collarbones, dipping the pads of his fingers past where the zipper on the front of his suit had slipped.

Donghyuck leaned in when his fingers finally got to Mark’s jawline, cupping his chin and pulling forward just barely to draw Mark up and toward him.

“You don’t have gills,” Donghyuck mused aloud, “so how long can you hold your breath?”

“I… I’m not sure,” Mark replied, already breathless.

“Do you want to find out?” Donghyuck grinned and winked, leaving Mark flushed and vibrating with anticipation. He barely got a chance to nod before Donghyuck was pushing him backward so Mark was lying flat on the ground, most of his body on dry sand and one knee bent upward. 

Donghyuck loomed over Mark, his fingers buried in the sand on either side of his head. With the way the sun was bouncing off of his features, Mark couldn’t help but think that Donghyuck was the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes upon, human or otherwise.

However, Mark didn’t have a lot of extra time to dwell on just how _gorgeous_ Donghyuck was before the aforementioned merboy leaned down and carefully placed his lips on Mark’s.

At that moment, the last missing puzzle piece in Mark’s life, the last part of the mystery he had never solved, fell into place the second their lips collided. Nothing had ever felt more _right_.

Mark cautiously looped his arms around Donghyuck and pulled him down closer, forcing the merboy from his palms to his forearms. He laughs against Mark’s lips, but doesn’t pull away.

Now, don’t get Mark wrong, the kiss was amazing. But he wanted more, so he took the initiative to tilt his head to the side at he perfect angle where their lips slotted together and Mark nearly combusted right then and there.

Donghyuck’s lips had no damn _right_ being as soft as they were, nor should Mark be as addicted to his taste as he was already. If sunshine had a taste, that was what Mark imagined he tasted like along with sea salt, but that was most likely the product of the merboy spending most of his time submerged in saltwater.

Mark felt Donghyuck lick at the seam of his lips, so he opened his mouth, letting the essence of warm summer sun and the ocean flood his senses completely. Mark wound his fingers through Donghyuck’s silky silver locks, tugging their bodies impossibly closer.

In retaliation, Donghyuck bit down on Mark’s bottom lip harshly, eliciting a whimper from the back of Mark’s throat. His lungs were burning for air but the last thing he wanted to do was pull away, so Mark let himself get dizzy from the sensations.

Mark was just about to give up and break away for air when a voice reached his ears, calling his name from afar.

“Mark?!” It was Jisung.

Donghyuck’s head shot up at the sound of the voice, ignoring Mark’s whine at the loss of contact even though the human had been seconds away from breaking the kiss himself.

“I have to go,” the merboy whispered, voice quiet but rushed. “I can’t let them see me.”

Mark debating pouting and saying that Jisung was trustworthy just so he could get a few more moments with Donghyuck, but he understood the situation well enough, understood Donghyuck’s _fear_ well enough to let him go.

“Go, then.” Mark untangled his fingers from Donghyuck’s hair, sitting them both upright with Donghyuck halfway on his lap.

“I’ll come back again,” Donghyuck delivered a hushed promise that Mark took straight into his heart and wrapped it up with a little bow and a note to revisit it whenever he wanted to be happy. Outwardly, Mark simply pressed a careful kiss on Donghyuck’s lips.

“I’m already looking forward to it.”

Donghyuck smiled, placing a small kiss onto Mark’s knuckles. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Jisung stumbled across Mark not seconds later, lying half in the water without his oxygen tank or goggles and one of his flippers tossed a few meters away on the beach.

It was quite the sight, as Jisung would recount later.

His partner rushed forward, capturing him in a rare hug which Mark wasn’t quite sure he deserved before turning right around and punching him in the shoulder, which he _definitely_ deserved.

“You need to explain. Right now,” Jisung demanded. “Why the _hell_ did you think it was a good idea to untether yourself? I’ve been searching nearby beaches all morning after the storm subsided. I thought you were _dead_ , Mark. We all did.”

Mark started to get up and face Jisung, but something cut into his palm. He splayed his hand out flat to see one of Donghyuck’s opalescent scaled resting on his open palm, shimmering in the sunlight. Mark wanted to laugh. Donghyuck must have put it there just before he kissed Mark’s knuckles in farewell.

“Mark!” It was Jeno’s voice this time. Mark didn’t even know his brother was in the country.

Jeno skidded to a halt when he saw Mark crouched in the water, scale in hand.

“He’s real?” Jeno breathed. Mark just nodded numbly, his brain struggling to keep up with everything happening that his fatigue was catching up with him. “Holy shit.”

“Who is real? The mermaid?” Jisung asked, confused. Before Mark could open his mouth to correct him, Jisung did it himself. “Sorry, mer _boy_.”

“Yeah…” Mark exhaled slowly. “It’s him.”

“And you saw him?” This was the most eager that Mark had seen Jeno about mermaids since the day they met Donghyuck in Jeju.

“He saved me,” Mark admitted, shrugging his shoulders.

“Okay…” Jisung drew the word out, straightening up from the kneeling position he had taken when Mark had opened his palm to reveal the scale. “Let’s get you back to the hotel where you can explain everything to us before Taeil literally hands your ass to you.”

As Mark stood to leave the beach, he glanced back to see a flicker of silver on the horizon, and smiled to himself, rubbing the scale with his thumb thoughtfully.

He would be back very soon.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on my socials about anything <3
> 
>  
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> [twitter](https://twitter.com/baridalive)  
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